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Cardiff City new recruit Emiliano Sala expressed his concern about his plane shortly before the disappearance of the light aircraft over the Channel, according to an audio message sent to friends and to relatives.
The Argentine striker, signed Saturday by the French club Nantes for a total of 17 million euros, was flying to Cardiff aboard the plane that disappeared from the radar Monday at about 20 kilometers north of the island of Guernsey. night.
"I'm on a plane that seems to collapse and I'm leaving for Cardiff," Sala said in a WhatsApp audio message conveyed by Argentine media.
"If in an hour and a half you do not hear from me anymore, I do not know if they will send people to pick me up, because they will not find me, you know. I'm so scared "added.
Sala is missing after the disappearance of the single-engine aircraft Piper PA-46 Malibu.
A 15-hour search Tuesday in the English Channel, covering an area of 3,155 square kilometers, has identified "a number of floating objects in the water," police said in Guernsey.
"We have not found any sign of presence on board, and if they land in the water, the chances of survival are unfortunately slim," said the police.
The search was to resume at sunrise on Wednesday.
French civil aviation authorities confirmed that Sala, 28, "was on board the plane". It is thought that there was another pbadenger in the plane.
Guernsey police, located just off the north coast of France, said the pilot had asked to lower his altitude shortly before Jersey's neighboring air traffic control lost contact with the plane. # 39; air.
& # 39; Fearing the worst & # 39;
One of the rescuers looking for the missing plane had admitted earlier that "they feared the worst," thought Sala's father, Horacio.
"Unfortunately, we fear the worst … The sea temperature is so cold right now," AFP John Fitzgerald, chief officer of Channel Islands Air Search, told AFP.
Horacio Sala, in tears, told the press in Progreso, where the player's family resides, that "the hours flowing and that I do not know anything, it makes me fear the worst".
"I do not know, no one has spoken to me, not a call from the embbady, the club, nobody," he said. "All I want is that you find it."
The player's mother, Mercedes, said in an interview with Argentina's C5N television channel that the plane belonged to Cardiff's president, Mehmet Dalman.
Sala, who had been in Nantes since 2015 and had scored 13 goals in all competitions this season, had signed a three-and-a-half year contract with Cardiff, threatened with relegation, subject to obtaining an authorization international.
"We were very shocked to learn that the plane was gone." We expected Emiliano to arrive in Cardiff last night and was to be his first day with the team, "he said. said Premier League executive director Ken Choo. declaration.
"We continue to pray for positive news."
Argentine football legend Diego Maradona expressed his sadness but said that he hoped the plane had simply gone astray.
"I hope everything will have happened on the wrong airport and that we will find it alive, that's all," he said in an audio message on journalist Martin Arevalo's Instagram account.
"It's a terrible misfortune when such things happen."
Cardiff canceled a scheduled training session on Tuesday and stunned fans gathered in front of the club to drop flowers and scarves.
In the shock of his former teammates, Nantes has postponed his Coupe de France match against third-ranked coach Sannois Saint-Gratien from Wednesday to Sunday.
Fans watch
Meanwhile, hundreds of fans of his former team gathered Tuesday night for a vigil in the city of western France, laying flowers, scarves and flags on the fountain and chanting the name of the striker on the Place Royale.
"I still have hope, it's a fighter," said Nantes president Waldemar Kita, in a tweet published by the Ligue 1 club.
When he wrote Saturday in Cardiff, threatened with relegation, Saturday, Sala, who also has Italian nationality, said in a statement: "I am very happy to be here, it is a great pleasure for me and I I can not wait to start. " coach, meet my new teammates and get to work.
"For me, it's special (being the club's record signing) .I came here to work and help my teammates and the club."
Sala's last message on Instagram showed him surrounded by Nantes players. "The ultima ciao (the last goodbye)," he writes.
Sala began his career in the French club Bordeaux, which he joined in 2010, and loaned money to other French clubs like Orleans, Niort and Caen.
He joined Nantes in 2015 for a million euros and scored 42 goals in Ligue 1 in three and a half seasons at the Stade de la Beaujoire.
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